The media and the scandal/scrutiny vacuum with Trump off Twitter

Interesting, almost ominous piece from Frank Bruni about how Trump's presence turned down the scrutiny dial on his most vocal opponents...who no longer have Trump to hide behind.

Opinion | When You Don’t Have Trump to Hide Behind

With Trump off Twitter, the scandal vacuum will be filled. Ready for a new class of bad actors?

That dynamic may be having an impact on Andrew Cuomo. Would his concealment of Covid-19 deaths among New York’s nursing home residents be sparking as much outrage if Trump were still in the White House to mismanage the pandemic and lie more extravagantly about it than anyone else — and to deflect criticism of his own failings with hyperbolic rants about Cuomo’s? Recall that Cuomo won acclaim during the first chapter of the pandemic in part by specifically styling himself as Trump’s public-relations antonym and holding news conferences that were (supposedly) as factual as Trump’s were fantastical. He no longer has that counterpoint and counterpart to burnish him.

 

I'm comfortable with the horse being out of the hospital, and now, just having to worry about the usual rats and vermin in there.

 

Why is it a surprise that, when the shit volcano stops erupting, folks begin to notice other parts of the landscape?

It’s also not much of a surprise that, out of an editorial that was mainly focused on the Lincoln Project, founded by members of the GOP, the quote you chose is about a Democrat governor.

 

Cable news needs something to get people outraged about. I imagine the real outrage during the Trump era was the damage being done more by his policies and underlings in various federal agencies than by his fingers.

 

Cuomo struck me as a major political beneficiary of Trump's ineptitude. I think it's important to have grace for Cuomo, as for all our leaders, because we didn't know what we didn't know back in late January and February. But he hasn't a done bang-up job and appears to have been involved in a notable cover-up...that only now is getting the attention it perhaps always deserved.

 

Here's the Washington Post taking a big, justified swing at CNN for letting a brother interview a brother and heroize him, only to fall silent now, when the brother has made a huge mistake that he covered up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...inding-us-why-conflicts-interest-poison-news/

 

Cuomo definitely took inappropriate victory laps. I mean, he was telling us all in March and April this was going to come back. Wasn't quite the time to bang out a quickie book about how he'd steered the state out of the worst public health crisis in a century. But I don't think he's going to take an irrecoverable blow for the nursing home debacle. Generally speaking, the people criticizing him now were the same people criticizing him for being despot and shutting the state down last spring. It's all on political lines. Republicans who worshipped dear leader declaring it would all go away like magic were mad at Cuomo.

Plus. we just barely got thru four years in which nobody paid a price for bullshit with a body count. Why should people start paying a price now?

 

I think this is a better question than you probably intended.

The people who'd pay a price now have some sense of shame. That's why they'd pay a price.

The dirty secret is the shaming session approach will hurt the left more than the right. It may very well be designed that way, too. The far-left, radical progressives can bully the average liberal with even a hint of scandal. That is, in essence, what's unfolding at the NYT.

Trump? Almost impervious - he has no shame!

I imagine there's some part of Cuomo who actually feels bad. Some part of Biden who feels bad for...I think Joe Biden feels bad for a million things, and it'll be used by the people around him to get what they want by leveraging that guilt.

What Bruni didn't write - but I personally think is true - is that being sorry will be invitation or grace. Trump escaped "punishment." The New Bad People, especially on the left, will not granted leniency for their repentance.

 

I almost wrote "unless there isn't really a liberal bias in the media," which to some degree touches on exactly what you wrote. As you noted, it is easier to assign blame and punish people when they are vulnerable to acknowledging their own frailties (Al Franken and Katie Hill come to mind).

That said, in Cuomo's case, I think he plays a harder, more cutthroat brand of ball than most of his Dem counterparts. I can see him Trumping his way through this and coming out with an elevated profile, whether that's an even more ironclad grip on governor or a positioning of himself as the 2028 presidential candidate. He'd only be 70 then. You have to think the decades his Dad spent waffling about a run for higher office are on his mind.

 

He will never be the Dem nominee, there are too many people within the party that would actively work to make sure that doesn't happen.

 

Topic to discuss: If newspapers truly cared about "journalism," "ethics," "reporting," "being fair," "being a watchdog" Fredrick says they would immediately ORDER their staff members off of Twitter. Now. Twitter is picking and choosing who(m) to silence. It's disgusting frankly. Trump should be on Twitter. If anybody tries hard enough they would find thousands of posts a day "violating Twitter policy." Those posts remain. Whether it's Trump or so many others, the silencing of voices on Twitter (yes I know it's a private company, big deal it's still censoring and acting like a communist nation) should make newspapers STOP USING IT. Newspapers are not in the business of reporting fairly any more thus they will continue to use Twitter. Tell me Fredrick is wrong here. I don't see how you could say I'm wrong, but go ahead and tell me I'm wrong.
Summary of this post: Newspapers should cancel Twitter NOW. No more business with Twitter because of its stance in silencing individuals. True newspapers silence NOBODY.

 

Colbert's ratings will crash and Samantha Bee will be cancelled without a new Republican bogeyman to rail against.